Quill pig is another name for a porcupine. Porcupines are unattractive and unpopular, but, as animals go, and unlike eagles, elephants, and donkeys, they are reasonably harmless good neighbors that mind their own business. Here's where we can talk about being good neighbors and why it's eternally important.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Maybe I’m Not Really a Christian

I’m not going to attend my church this Sunday because they
will be holding a special ceremony to bless a church member who is being
deployed to Afghanistan.

If you ask the pastor or the session whether the church
should take political stands, they’ll tell you no, the church must stand
separate from politics. Praying for the troops and asking for
a special blessing on one as he goes—or decrying legalized abortion and gay
marriage, for that matter—isn’t political? And if it’s political, shouldn’t
the moral aspects at least be discussed and objections entertained? We have had
no public discussion of the matter, so the answer must be no.

So I was thinking of going instead to a church that I
thoroughly enjoyed visiting two weeks ago, but I rememberd that today they are
commissioning a man as an Air Force chaplain. This is a church based on the
idea that “only the gospel unites us, and only the gospel should divide.” That
sounds great, but where is putting on a uniform called for by the gospel?

The “soldiers of God” in Vietnam went there at the command
of a government that told them (and us who stayed home) that unless they won
that war our freedoms were in danger. Well, they didn’t win that war, and we’ve
been losing freedom ever since, but just as Muhammad Ali could rightly say “No
North Vietnamese ever called me a nigger,” no North Vietnamese or Viet Cong has
taken away our freedoms. No, our freedoms have been taken by the liars,
hypocrites, thieves, and murderers who sent those “soldiers of God” to Vietnam.

All sorts of honors are bestowed on those who fought in
Vietnam. Why? They lost the war. Or at least they didn’t win it. Yet the world
didn’t end. So why did they go? What honor is there in having gone? They obeyed
the commands of cowards, liars, hypocrites, thieves, and murderers. If they did
so knowingly, what honor do they deserve? If they were fooled like the rest of
us, shouldn’t they be at least chagrined? What is there to be proud of?

Why are no honors bestowed on
Daniel Ellsburg, the Berrigan brothers, and others who said long before the
evacuation of Saigon—and were persecuted for doing so—that the nation was in no
danger and that the war was wrong? The raunch peddlers were right then; the
respectable, including most US Christians, were wrong.

What judgment, I wonder, awaits the sky pilots of those
days?

Is it too much to ask why there has been no national-level
repentance on the part of Christians for the needless death of a million
Vietnamese who had no intention of harming us? Why is the assumption beyond
discussion that Christians should once again obey a government headed by a
hypocritical, lying, thieving murderer by joining what amounts to his personal
military, and go off to war?

Our problem today is that we don’t
even want deliverance. We don’t even know that we need deliverance. We live
with a State that is corrupt and wicked to the core, we send our children to be
educated in its system, we pay taxes at levels way beyond what Caesar ever
demanded and then we blithely say, “render unto Caesar”. This is not what Jesus
was advocating.

Am I the only one who notices that we also fly Caesar’s flag
in our houses of worship, and we encourage our children to put on his uniform
and kill innocents on his behalf?

Let’s ask a few questions about today’s Caesar.

Isn’t someone who would put people
in cages for doing what he himself did yet never went to jail for a hypocrite?

Isn’t someone who says things like “The
troops will be home by July; you can take it to the bank” and “You will be able
to keep your current physician and insurance” and then doesn’t deliver a liar?

Isn’t someone who takes people’s
money at gunpoint a thief?

Isn’t someone who kills innocent
people a murderer?

If that is the character of the leader elected by a sizable
majority of a society, should we not conclude that not only the government he
heads but the society that elected it is “corrupt and wicked to the core”? Far
from trusting our government when it says our freedoms—which, of course, it is
stripping from us by the day—are in danger, shouldn’t we assume that it is
lying to us to preserve its hold on power? Far from encouraging our youth to
put on its uniform, shouldn’t we be doing all we can to guide them into the service
of the true king of the universe?

Or when Peter warns us about those who “despise authority” (2
Pet 2:10) is he saying we should simply go along with those in power no matter
what they say or do, some variation of “slaves obey your masters; man’s slave
is Christ’s free man”? Does God encourage us to become amoral agents, puppets
on the strings of people like the murderous presidents of the last hundred (or
two hundred or more) years? Or when he says “if you get a chance to be free,
take it” (1 Cor 7:21) does he mean he expects us to think for ourselves as much
as we can, informed by Scripture, and to act at all times as moral agents who
will give an account of everything we do (Eccl 12:14)?